


All We Are

by penstrikesmidnight



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Emotions, M/M, Magic, Magic Shop, Minor Iwaizumi Hajime/Sugawara Koushi, Oikawa Tooru Needs a Hug, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Sawamura Daichi, Red String of Fate, References to Depression, Self-Discovery, Vague manga spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28688304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penstrikesmidnight/pseuds/penstrikesmidnight
Summary: Tooru spends the summer working with Daichi and Daichi's daughter in their small, cozy magic shop to try and figure out why he cannot see colors anymore. Maybe there can be more magic than Tooru thinks in a quiet, unassuming life.
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru/Sawamura Daichi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17
Collections: Haikyuu!! Urban Fantasy Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my piece for the Haikyuu!! Urban Fantasy Bang! As usually happens with me, this fic got way longer than I ever anticipated it to be and changed a lot from where it started, but I've fallen in love with it and I hope you enjoy it too! 
> 
> Title from the song All We Are by Andy Kong.

The alleyway that Tooru has found himself in is small, quiet, and quaint. Vines grow up the sides of brick buildings, joining with big-leafed, potted plants on the windowsills. A cat hunches behind a tricycle as he passes by. Grass grows between the cracks on the sidewalk. Tooru glances down, checking the address on the small slip of paper in his palm.

A small shop sits on the corner of the street. It is a strange way to approach the shop, but Suga had insisted that he come up the alley this way instead of by the street, so, slipping the paper into his pocket, Tooru walks toward the building.

Before he touches the door, it jumps open as if on its own. There is a jingling of bells and a chime of a laugh as a little girl runs out the door, yelling hello at him as she passes. Her hair is tied in a bow. The ribbon streams behind her, wavy and soft and _red_. Tooru blinks, follows the strange ghostly line back into the shop, where it disappears. When he turns back to where she had been before, she is gone, having turned the corner, a strange red contrail left in her wake.

Tooru places his hand on the doorknob to steady himself. He takes a breath and opens the door, listening to the cheerful greeting of the bell.

“Hi, welcome in!”

Apparently the universe has decided that Tooru is not going to be able to catch his footing anytime soon. He should have realized, he reprimands himself. He should have known Suga would have sent him to someone he already knew.

Sawamura Daichi stands behind a wood and glass counter, pouring some sort of glittering powder into a small vial. Tooru doesn’t say anything, just watches as he caps and seals the small container, setting it off to the side with five or so other, full bottles of powder.

Oikawa is always surprised at how much someone can look so much like their high school self and so different at the same time. Daichi isn’t an exception. He hasn’t changed much—he still has a firm, solid build (Tooru knows from Suga that Hajime and Daichi frequent the gym together and sometimes the competition gets a little heated), he hasn’t grown much, and his hair is about the same as it was before, maybe a little longer. But his face has aged in a way that catches Tooru a little by surprise at how good he looks, and he has deeper laugh lines around his eyes than before. 

Before he can be caught staring, Tooru turns his attention away from Daichi. The wall behind him is decorated with shelves of bottles similar to the ones on the counter, no prices attached. Tooru wonders what they could be. He glances into the counter and sees jewelry and knickknacks made of crystals and other, probably mystical, elements. He feels a brief stirring of curiosity deep in his chest. 

Finally, when Tooru has stayed silent for too long, Daichi glances up. Tooru sees the recognition seep into his features, and he’s surprised when a smile breaks across Daichi’s face. “Oikawa? Hey! I didn’t know you were back in Japan. How are you doing?”

Tooru gives a thin smile at Daichi’s overwhelmingly excited greeting. “I’ve only been here a few weeks. I’m finally settled in, so, you know.”

He shrugs in a _whatever_ way. Daichi’s smile stays warm and open when Tooru’s words taper off, and he picks up the conversation with ease. “I’m sure you didn’t stumble here on accident.” Daichi wipes off the excess powder on the counter with a cloth, only breaking eye contact for a second. “What can I do for you?”

Tooru sighs. He folds his arms, suddenly self-conscious. “Maybe I really am here just to look.”

Daichi raises his eyebrows. He leans his hands on the counter. Tooru braces himself for an argument, but all Daichi says is, “Well, if you insist. Let me know if you need help with anything.”

Tooru’s smile doesn’t change as he turns away from the counter to the shop proper. It’s fairly small, but clean and orderly. Shelves line the walls similar to the one behind the counter, filled with various bottles and cute boxes of powders and liquids with strange names like _Wishing Stardust_ and _Liquid Joy_. It reminds him of a beauty store, but much more fascinating. He pauses next to a narrow section of items labeled _Emotional Balance_. The jars are opaque, various shades of gray, with names that belong on supplement pills rather than...whatever these are.

He glances furtively back at Daichi, who has gone back to carefully measuring powder into a wide, flat container. Tooru turns back to the shelves, but he really has no idea what he is looking for, especially when he starts seeing ratios on the labels of various ingredients he has literally never heard of before and don’t seem real, like _Powdered Dragon Scales_ and _Purified Fairy Tears_. 

After he has taken stock of the shop, he meanders back toward Daichi, pausing to pick up some tea that promises rejuvenated sleep. He’d always had trouble sleeping, so he figured why not try it out?

“Is this everything?” Daichi asks when Tooru approaches the counter again, his voice still warm. Tooru has to push down an irrational surge of defensiveness. After all, he was the one who’d decided not to ask for Daichi’s help in the first place. 

“What do you know about vision problems?” Tooru asks airily as he sets down the tin of tea. 

Daichi’s eyebrows crease. “Well, I’m not a doctor...”

Tooru rolls his eyes. “Not like that. About six months ago I started having problems seeing color. Like, certain colors would flicker in and out at random times. A week or so ago, everything finally just turned gray, and Suga was concerned so he told me to come see you.”

Tooru shrugs, as if this isn’t a big deal, as if he didn’t wake up in the morning feeling more and more apathetic about life as more and more color seeped away. He’d heard about things like this happening, but in a folklorish, mythical sort of way. A friend’s cousin’s husband’s aunt who could suddenly sense when people were lying, or a coworker’s neighbor’s boyfriend who suddenly turned invisible when they felt inadequate or embarrassed. Tooru never would have thought he, of all people, would be afflicted with a magical ailment. He has always lived a perfectly ordinary life.

He had also never thought that he would find Sawamura Daichi running a shop of magical cures, but here they were. 

Daichi was studying him thoughtfully. “Do you have a history of color blindness in your family?”

Tooru scoffs, shaking his head no.

Daichi holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Settle down, I’m just trying to get some more information from you so we can figure this out. Sometimes genetic predispositions play a part in what could be wrong, and if someone you’re related to has, like, achromatopsia, or other color-related problems, it could play a part in what is happening.”

“Sorry to say, but I don’t know anyone who has anything like that. I’m 100% healthy,” Tooru answers, holding his arms out to the side as if modeling his clothes. “Except my leg, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Daichi’s eyes flick down to his knee for just the quickest instance, and Tooru struggles to keep his smile firm on his face. Of course Daichi knew. He was friends with Suga and Iwa, after all.

“Okay then,” Daichi continues, breezing over the awkward instance. “Can you describe a little more about what happened as you started losing color? Any particular color that went first or stayed gone, or comes back every once in a while? Have you noticed any patterns with the color loss? When did it start?”

Tooru folds his arms. He suddenly finds it hard to look at Daichi. He swallows, thinking about the red hair ribbon, the first true color he had seen in almost a month. Instead of mentioning it, he says, “I told you, it was like six months ago. Everything kind of seemed...muted. Wasn’t really a big deal, but then I noticed that some blue things didn’t look quite blue anymore. The one that was consistently gone first was yellow, then green. Look, I don’t know how this is going to help you…”

“Are you happy?”

“Huh?”

Tooru blinks, completely thrown by Daichi’s sudden question. Before he can ask Daichi to repeat the question, Daichi elaborates. “How are you feeling emotionally? Are you noticing any dips or highs in your moods that are odd?”

Tooru almost turns around and walks out of the shop. But something about Daichi standing there, his face still so open, makes him pause. “I mean, moving always kind of sucks, you know?” Tooru says with a slightly strained laugh. Daichi doesn’t say anything, just nods, his face sympathetic. He takes the small containers of powder, caps them, and moves them to the side. He picks up Tooru’s tin of tea and starts ringing it up. 

Tooru shifts from foot to foot. He can’t stand this silence anymore. He’s about to talk, about anything, about his move or Suga or the weather or even his damn muted emotions, when the door chimes again. 

“I’m back, and I got you a popsicle!”

Tooru turns to see the little girl who had darted out the door when he’d first arrived barreling back in, two wrapped treats clutched in her hands. His eyes instantly snap to her hair, but the ribbon is back to gray, no red in sight. He wonders if he hallucinated the whole thing--at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised. 

The little girl stops abruptly when she sees Tooru, her smile widening with excitement. “Oh, hello again! I like your hair!”

“Ah, thank you.” Tooru gives her an awkward wave, but she’s already turned her attention back to Daichi, offering him the second popsicle. Daichi takes it from her with a smile and a thank you, then turns back to Tooru. “I think we should run some tests. Nothing crazy, I promise. I need to order some supplies, but I’ll call you once they come in and we’ll get started, if you want to leave a number.”

Tooru shrugs, reaching for the pen Daichi has outstretched to him. He’s already over this whole production. As long as he can go back to Suga and say he tried, he would be okay to never come back.

“I’ll call you,” Daichi repeats again as Tooru finishes jotting his phone number down, pushing the tea toward Tooru.

“Oh. Here.” Tooru fumbles to get his wallet out of his pocket. 

“Nah, it’s all good. You look like you need it.” Tooru thinks maybe he should be offended by Daichi not-so-subtly telling him he looks terrible, but that seems like too much effort, so he just mumbles a thank you, picking up the tea.

“If the popsicle will make you feel better, you can have it instead of Papa. He doesn’t like popsicles very much anyway, but it’s so hot outside I thought he might appri...appreti...”

“Appreciate,” Daichi says with a smile.

She nods. “Appreciate it! I learned that word yesterday!”

The world shifts again, ever so slightly. Tooru’s eyes flick to Daichi, who looks a little sheepish. “Uh, yeah. Oikawa, this is my daughter.”

“Nice to meet you!” she says, pulling the popsicle back toward her, only to turn around and offer it to Tooru. Numb, Tooru takes it. 

“Your...You…” Hysterically, Tooru blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind. “I thought Suga said you were into guys?”

Daichi’s chuckle is so awkward, and Tooru is sure that if he could see color right then, Daichi’s face would be beet red as he rubs the back of his neck. He’s also sure, now that he’s thinking about it, that he is also blushing. Daichi’s eyes dart to Hoshiko, then back to Tooru. “See you in a few days, okay? I’ll let you know when I get all the necessary ingredients.”

Tooru nods, not even bothering to say goodbye as he practically runs out the door. He pulls out his phone immediately as he turns onto the street, the opposite way that he’d come. “Hey,” Suga says as he answers the phone, his voice cheerful. “How’d it go?”

“You didn’t tell me Daichi has a kid!” Tooru hisses, as if Daichi can hear him from two doors away. “She’s gotta be, like, eight!”

“She’s six,” Suga says, his voice much calmer than it should be. “Well, almost seven, but she’s something else, isn’t she? Since you’re out, Hajime and I will come meet you for lunch somewhere. How does that sound?”

Tooru tightens his grip on the phone. “Sure,” he says, hardly listening as Suga rattles off the name and directions to a small ramen shop close to where he is currently at. He’s still thinking about his short conversation with Daichi, about how he has a daughter and runs a shop filled with magical supplements. He hasn’t really thought about Sawamura Daichi since he left for Argentina, not except in passing, when Hajime started dating Suga, and his name was casually mentioned after nights out.

He balances his phone between his shoulder and his cheek, opening the popsicle Daichi’s daughter had handed to him. He doesn’t know what Suga’s saying to him, but he feels an overwhelming urge to know. “What’s her name?”

“Uh, what?”

“Daichi’s daughter. What’s her name?”

“Oh. Her name’s Hoshiko.”

Hoshiko. Star.

Tooru looks back toward the shop, but all he sees is a small, abandoned looking house, nothing like the quiet, quaint cottage-shop he’d just been in. The world is still gray, but he can’t get the image of the red bow in Hoshiko’s hair out of his head, the way it spooled back toward the shop, tangling him in the middle of wherever it was going.

The popsicle is sweet and cold as Tooru puts it in his mouth. That, at least, was predictable. He’s fairly sure that nothing about his life in the immediate future would ever be this normal again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days later, Daichi calls Tooru to tell him he’s ready to start figuring out what’s going on with Tooru’s vision, and that’s how he finds himself back at the magic shop that looks more like a cottage than a store, in the cute, charmingly secluded alleyway, holding a glass of something he’s sure might kill him.

Three days later, Daichi calls Tooru to tell him he’s ready to start figuring out what’s going on with Tooru’s vision, and that’s how he finds himself back at the magic shop that looks more like a cottage than a store in the cute, charmingly secluded alleyway, holding a glass of something he’s sure might kill him.

“It’s harmless,” Daichi insists, trying and failing to suppress a smile at whatever face Tooru is making. “I just want to see how you respond to certain emotional stimuli. This one is calm, which won’t show us much on its own, but it will be good to have a baseline for measuring other things.”

“It’s smoking!”

“The smoking ones taste the best!” Hoshiko pipes up. She’s sitting behind the counter coloring at a small table and chair. There’s a second chair across from her, and Tooru can only imagine Daichi squeezing himself into the tiny seat, helping her with homework or keeping her company. Once again, her hair is up in a bow, but it doesn’t turn red this time. “The glittery ones like surprise are the ones that taste the worst.” Hoshiko screws her face up in a universal _blech_ face. “But that one will be good. Drink it!”

“Well, if she insists,” Tooru says, picking up the mixture and swirling it, watching as the smoke spins in a lazy circle.

“That’s usually how it works around here,” Daichi answers with a sigh. Tooru glances back at Hoshiko, who stares at him expectantly. The shape of her eyes reminds him of Daichi. He wonders if they’re the same brown as his as well. 

Before he can think too much of it, he shoots the drink, waiting for the expected burning in his throat. It doesn’t come. Instead, the drink is slightly floral, surprisingly refreshing. He blinks. Daichi laughs softly.

“Told you. It’s a good balancer. We drink it every once in a while; it’s one of Hoshiko’s favorites. It’ll take about twenty minutes for the drink to absorb fully into your system, so you can go ahead and relax. After that, I have something we’re going to try.”

Daichi gestures to the far back corner, where two armchairs sit next to a tiny coffee table.

Tooru looks from Hoshiko to Daichi suspiciously. “That’s all?”

“What, did you think I was going to cast spells on you or draw pentagrams to summon demons?” Daichi laughs. “My sisters might be into that kind of stuff, but I’m not. I stick to potions, for the most part.” Tooru is envious at how effortlessly happy he seems. Always smiling and laughing, warm and friendly. Nothing like Tooru’s frigid apathy or sarcastic insecurity. When was the last time Tooru had even laughed?

“Are you, like, a witch or something?” Tooru presses. 

Daichi shrugs. “I guess, if you want to call it that. It’s not really what you’re thinking, though. My family has been drawn to magic for some reason or another for generations. I guess it just passed along to me.”

Before Tooru can ask any more questions, the door opens and three teenagers stumble in, laughing. Tooru retreats to one of the armchairs in the back corner as Daichi helps his new customers. 

The shop is surprisingly busy for being so hidden. After Daichi skillfully navigates the unruly teens, an older woman comes in who is apparently a regular who can’t finish a sentence without going onto another tangent. Tooru watches Daichi turn his full attention to her, even as two other sets of customers wander in. It looks...overwhelmingly busy. Every so often, Hoshiko wriggles in her seat, looking a little unhappy at the fact that she can’t tell her father whatever she’s thinking, but before she can become too neglected, Daichi is suddenly at her side, making sure she’s okay and still preoccupied.

Tooru is honestly fascinated with the way Daichi is so good at this job. It reminds him of how he had been grudgingly impressed with his captaining skills in high school. He’s just so...good. So nice.

“Sorry,” Daichi says breathlessly once the shop empties. “Summers are our busy times. Usually my sister is here to help out, but she’s gone for a few weeks so it’s just me holding down the fort. This shouldn’t take too long.”

Tooru follows Daichi back to the counter. Daichi produces another glass of something. Tooru takes it warily, sniffing it, but it smells perfectly fine. The glass is cool in his hands. And it’s not smoking, so that’s a plus. “Like I said before, I'm introducing some emotional balancers into your system. Then, in the next few days, we can build on them in small quantities. See if anything triggers a change and go from there.”

“Do you…” Tooru starts, but he doesn’t know how to ask Daichi if he thinks Tooru’s emotions are...well, wrong. If he’s somehow lost them and has to find them like some cliché Netflix drama. He doesn’t know if he wants the answer. He doesn’t know how he would handle the situation if the answer was yes.

So, without finishing the thought out loud, he drains the glass like he had the first time--quickly.

Tooru gags, having to force himself not to vomit back up the drink as the taste registers. “Shi--” He catches himself quickly when he hears Hoshiko laughing, “--oot.” He coughs. He feels his eyes starting to water. “What the heck is in this thing?”

“I _told_ you the glittering ones taste the worst.” Hoshiko stands, then clambers onto the stool next to Daichi so she is eye-level with them. Daichi is trying and failing to hide a smirk at Tooru’s obvious distress. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

“Hoshiko,” Daichi reprimands, his smile barely wavering. Hoshiko murmurs a dismissive _sorry_ , but she’s still staring at Tooru with her penetrating gaze.

“Ah, I’m having a little trouble seeing colors,” Tooru answers, feeling slightly cowed by a six year old, of all people. He sets the glass down on the counter. When he turns his attention back to Hoshiko, he sees her eyes have softened just a tad.

“Ohhh,” Hoshiko says. “Well, now I know why you drank that one so fast. Because you couldn’t see the glitter. It’s all right, now that I know, I’ll warn you better next time!”

Tooru opens his mouth to retort, then realizes that he had not, in fact, registered the slight shimmer in the drink he’d just consumed, that he can now see traces of on the glass. Before he has to come up with anything to say to her, Hoshiko has already moved on to her next topic of conversation. “Koushi said you just moved here. Are you sad that you left wherever you were before?”

Tooru glances furtively toward Daichi, who rubs a hand down his face. “I...Maybe a little? Do you talk to Koushi-kun a lot?”

Tooru thinks his attempt at changing the subject is terrible, but Hoshiko takes the bait. She sits up straight. “Yes, Koushi’s my favorite! He comes to visit us at least once a week. He said you and Iwaizumi-kun are best friends like him and Papa are best friends. I like Iwaizumi-kun too, although sometimes he looks a little scary, but he’s not scary at all...”

“Sweetheart,” Daichi says, an edge of steel in his pleasant tone, “I need to talk to Oikawa-san in private for a few minutes. How about you go upstairs and get ready for lunch? We can watch a show before we come back and open the store.”

Hoshiko’s face falls. Before Tooru can take pity on her, Daichi says, “He’ll be back tomorrow, and probably the next day too, so you can talk more then. But for now, I need to talk to him. Okay?”

“Fine,” Hoshiko sulks. “Bye, Oikawa-san! Nice to see you again! Maybe tomorrow you can eat lunch with us!”

And with that, Hoshiko darts to a small staircase nestled in the corner of the shop, leaving a heavy silence in her wake. 

“I’m sorry,” Daichi says a little helplessly after they’re sure Hoshiko is gone. “She doesn’t usually take to strangers like this so I’m not really...prepared…”

“It’s fine,” Tooru says, and he’s surprised to realize that he’s not at all lying. From what he’s observed so far, Hoshiko is funny and polite enough, and she has an eerie way of knowing what Tooru’s trying to hide from her. And she’s six. Well, almost seven but still. “Do you live here, then?”

“Oh,” Daichi looks up at the ceiling in surprise, as if he has just noticed it is two stories instead of one. “Yeah. It’s not a lot, but it’s cozy.”

Tooru suddenly has an overwhelming urge to see Daichi’s living space, especially because it is so close, practically at his fingertips. He’s quite proud of his self-restraint when, instead of prying more into his personal life, Tooru asks, “Anyway, what’s the verdict, Dai-chan?”

Daichi blinks a few times at the unexpected nickname. Tooru waits patiently for him to answer his question, knowing he was too polite to say anything about the name. “Well, the emotions will stay in your system for about twelve hours, but they’re significantly less potent after the first few hours. Let me know if there’s any change tonight, and when you come back tomorrow we’ll mix something else up for you.”

Tooru wrinkles his nose. “I guess I’ll be here tomorrow then. Same time?”

“Yeah,” Daichi answers. It could be Tooru’s new, hopeful feeling budding in his chest, but he thinks Daichi is a little flustered when he answers. “I hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience…”

Oikawa raises his eyebrows. “I literally have no one else to go to. If you’re demanding an hour of my time a day just to drink random potions, then…” Tooru shrugs. He thinks about saying more, but that damn door chimes again. “I think I can deal with it. Tell Hoshiko goodbye for me.”

As Tooru turns away, he could swear he sees a strange red thread on Daichi’s hand as he lifts it to give Tooru an awkward wave. Tooru looks down at his own hand, but it is pale gray, same as it has been for days. And when he looks over at Daichi, the red has faded, as if he had imagined it.

Maybe he had. He rubs at his pinkie, which suddenly itches as if he has something warm wrapped around it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/kudos always welcome!
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/pensmidnight)  
> [tumblr](https://twirlergirl1206.tumblr.com/)


End file.
